In the pensive and nimble “A Hologram for the King,” Tom Hanks isn’t waiting for Godot. But he might as well be.

Hanks plays Alan Clay, once one of the best salesmen at one of the best companies in America: Schwinn Bicycles. But then he became part of a move to outsource most of the company’s labor to China (“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he ruefully explains) and before long, Schwinn was a mere shadow of itself, with hundreds of employees out of a job. (One of Alan’s recurring nightmares is the day he had to lay off all those people).